Man of Many Projects

At lunch at the Maison Boulud restaurant in his Legation Quarter project in Beijing, Handel Lee holds court on his myriad passions: Chinese art, blues and jazz music, motorcycles and, more to the point, fine cuisine, as it fills the table. Law is discussed, too, for Lee, the son of Chinese immigrants to the U.S., ran the largest law firm in China until 2005.

Colleagues call him a rainmaker with all the right contacts. More people know him as a wheeler-dealer who drives splashy mainland real estate developments. Others eye his high-profile lifestyle and collection of homes, Harleys and female friends and call him a bon vivant. Lee chuckles at the descriptions, saying simply: "I'm a projects guy."

His projects include some of China's most acclaimed. The Courtyard, a Beijing restaurant and art gallery popular with celebrities such as Mick Jagger and fellow motorcycle buff Arnold Schwarzenegger, opened in 1996. Shanghai's Three on the Bund, a 90-year-old, seven-story stone tower redesigned by star architect Michael Graves, boasts art galleries, luxury shops and upscale restaurants such as Jean Georges. Many credit Three on the Bund for establishing the city's historic riverfront as a center of tourism, dining and nightlife when it opened in 2004.

The Bund wasn't exactly virgin territory then--Hong Kong restaurateur Michelle Garnaut had opened M on the Bund in 1999 and created an immediate sensation. But many feel that Lee stole M's thunder, storming in and even taking offices in her building. Either way, Three certainly cemented Lee's reputation as a bankable entrepreneur.

Nothing he had cooked up before, though, quite compares to the table he set at Legation Quarter in Beijing. It's also a high-stakes gamble that's still far from certain to pay off. Around the corner from Tiananmen Square, Lee restored the ivy-clad, gray stone buildings of the 106-year-old American Legation and installed an array of haute clubs, galleries and fine-dining halls. He lifted up part of the spacious lawn that surrounds the site's five buildings and then replanted it after putting in an underground theater. The Beijing Center for the Arts opened in one of the buildings last year and regularly features avant-garde shows. During the Olympics the stark white gallery showed contemporary Chinese art, some quite provocative. One exhibit sported huge paintings of crazed, fantasy attack dogs.

Such offerings are common in Tokyo, New York and London but weren't seen in China until the 47-year-old Lee arrived on the art scene in the 1990s. At his Courtyard Gallery he exhibited massive rocks with equally large price tags. At a time when luxury, whether shopping or dining, was confined to hotel complexes, he created some of China's first sophisticated showrooms of indulgence. "All along, my goal has been to bring the best of the world--whether art, architecture, food or fashion--to China," he says. "It's not just about doing cool projects that make money, but also about doing projects that push China forward."

Legation Quarter, however, is millions over budget and a year behind schedule--and Lee is now gone from the project. He says his work as the project manager was finished: "My day-to-day role isn't management. I put this together, conceptualized it and made it happen. Now it is time for me to step back. It feels good." But the construction is only 95% completed and nearly a third of the space remains empty. And before he left he said one of the owners had used the delays and cost overruns to try to squeeze him out of the project.

At Three on the Bund, Lee also departed suddenly, replaced by the owners after the project opened. All sides said the split was amicable, but many in Shanghai suggested that a rift had developed over spending and operational questions. In January he returned to his old law firm, Beijing-headquartered King & Wood, to head up the firm's global efforts to drum up new business from its Hong Kong office. After two acquisitions the firm has grown to 800 lawyers--up from 450 when he was chairman from 2004 to 2005.

Lee's focus on presentation and historic preservation instead of costs has always put him in conflict with his partners. Each project has a different group of investors but one thing in common--all are budget-busters and run behind schedule. Three on the Bund cost $36 million, not counting the property, owned by the Singaporean-Indonesian firm that bankrolled the project. Legation Quarter has cost $40 million so far, not counting the land and lease. "Handel doesn't pinch pennies," notes Paul Liu, a former chief operating officer at Three and longtime friend of Lee's.

Legation Quarter was especially taxing. Because of its historic character and proximity to Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People, officials made endless demands for approvals and changes. Since the project began in 2006 luxury brands, once starved for showroom sites, have found ample alternatives in Beijing thanks to its Olympics boom. Giorgio Armani, Chanel and an Evian spa such as the one ensconced at Three on the Bund decided to pass. VIP clubs for bankers and wine connoisseurs are on the back burner. Jean Georges, which had planned a bigger restaurant than its version in Three, pulled out because one of the chain's owners plans to open a hotel in Beijing and might install a branch there. Nevertheless, the Web site of one of Legation's investors, Hong Kong property company Vantone, still notes that Jean Georges will be moving in.

"We had to redo the business plan," says Lee. "Before, we were looking at much more retail, of a very high end. When they pulled out, we decided to make this more of a destination and arts center than a shopping place." The recession racking much of the Western World hasn't helped, either. "The impact is significant," he concedes, just before Chinese New Year and the opening of Zen, Legation's contemporary Chinese restaurant. "There are fewer businesspeople coming to China and spending is off. Everything is lower than we expected."

Yet before departing for Hong Kong Lee remained upbeat, always the supersalesman. "We've shifted our attention to the domestic market," he says. "The Chinese are still spending." Indeed, the mainland economy may be slowing, but Maison Boulud is still packed, even with bills of $50 to $100 a head. Lee was spotted chatting with Prince Andrew recently, while deposed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was sheltered in an upstairs dining room. On another day Versace hosted a fashion show on the lawn outside; Jet Li and Michelle Yeo attended.

If Legation fails to take off, it would be the third high-profile failure in a row for Lee. RBL (as in "restaurant, bar, lounge") and Icehouse--a club named for the Qing Dynasty ice warehouse that once occupied the stark stone building--lasted barely a year, closing in 2007. Beijingers never warmed to the high drink prices or the venue's poor location, near the central shopping street of Wangfujing in an area that lacked other nightlife. Lee held a stake in the project, losing his entire investment along with his partners'.

After that he had to abandon a Shanghai project venue in the wake of the Shanghai pension scandal that claimed the politician who approved it and the head of the company that owned the site. "That was a huge disappointment," he says, of a $70 million to $80 million plan to turn the old British consulate compound into a collection of restaurants and galleries and a museum. He says he lost $1 million, yet he mainly mourns the artistic loss. He had recruited Baghdad-born Zaha Hadid, probably the world's hottest architect, to design the complex. "It would have been like nothing China has seen," he claims.

Aesthetics run in his family. His mother is Dora Fugh Lee, a painter who studied with the scholar-poet Prince Pu Ru, cousin of Pu Yi, China's last emperor. She traces her lineage to Manchurian royalty; the Courtyard is part of a former estate that belonged to the family. There is also a family connection to the Legation. The father of Lee's mother was an aide to John Leighton Stuart, the last U.S. ambassador before the Communist takeover in 1949. Lee's father, Richard Lee, was a scientist who worked at the National Science Foundation and rose high in the ranks at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C., where Handel Lee grew up.

Plotting his own career path, Lee graduated from Georgetown University's law school, and moved in 1991 to China to open an office for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He became, by all accounts, a superb, often ruthless attorney. "At the negotiating table, I initially had problems adapting to Handel's style," admits Paul Deemer, who runs the China operation for Vinson & Elkins, describing it as more New York, go for the throat, than the genteel tradition of his Texas firm. Lee quickly adapted, after being recruited in 1997 to run Vinson & Elkins' China practice. "He's very much the gentleman these days." At the same time, Lee came to exemplify the energy and the anything's-possible ethos of fast-changing China--the ability to reinvent yourself (from lawyer to developer to art impresario back to lawyer) that's not so easy in mature markets such as the U.S., Tokyo or even Hong Kong.

He was also clearly infused with the goal of contributing to China's future. He recalls growing up hearing about the grandeur of Chinese civilization, then being confronted with the grim reality in early visits as a student in the 1980s. "I was shocked," he says. "It was crowded and poor, not at all the China that my family had talked about."

Law colleagues recall a workaholic, always well prepared, and a dazzling debater. Yet his interests ranged widely outside law, to music, motorcycles, art and architecture. An early Tibetan collector, Lee, who's never married, became a connoisseur of contemporary Chinese art well before the rest of the world. He restored a traditional Chinese courtyard home in Beijing and hired architects to build him a huge, modern getaway by Huairou Lake, a playground for Beijing's artists and hip crowd.

Lee's stubborn side is also legendary. "He's like a Rottweiler; once his jaws lock on something, he never lets go," says Liu, from Three on the Bund. He recalls a tempest over the ceiling at Jean Georges, Three's signature restaurant and the biggest operated by French chef Georges Vongerichten. Lee insisted on raising the roof, to heighten the elegance. "Everyone said it was impossible, but Handel refused to accept it," Liu says. "He went over the blueprints, and kept pushing. It was a matter of inches, but he just wouldn't give up. In the end he got his way, and he was right. It made a huge difference."

Three on the Bund site architect Lyndon Neri says Lee is totally hands on. "More like all over his consultants, partners and friends," he chuckles. "I think, deep down, he's a frustrated architect. The first three years working with him were unbearable, as he wanted to see everything all the way to what color fabric the pillows were going to be."

Graves initially rejected the project, Neri says, but Lee pestered the Pritzker Prize-winning architect until he relented. "He refused to take no for an answer," notes Neri, then director of Asian projects for Graves. "After two refusals, Handel flew to Princeton [New Jersey], and that was the first time I met him. He brought a ten-page design brief of what the space could be. I was really taken by his grasp of abstract concepts." Neri recommended reconsideration.

He later did some of the early design for Legation. "I have learned to appreciate his passion, and I believe this separates him from other developers," Neri says.

Lee might keep an eye out for new projects, but after 15 years of orchestrating developments while keeping one foot in a series of law firms--and with businesses now hunkering down--he is focusing on his law career once again. In fact, he sees his role back at King & Wood as another facet of his same goal of raising the bar in China. "We are trying to build King & Wood into the first PRC law firm in the ranks of international top-tier firms," he says. "Now I can devote time to project King & Wood."